Harry Potter and Recurring Day

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The timing was not right. Harry was getting used to that aspect of life on the island, how things did not always sync up the way they should. It wasn't something he could fix. Sirius had told Harry what happened in his future, briefly, and that had sort of been nice but had left him with more questions too, questions that he didn't want answered

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[everyone_takes]

Despite what she'd said to Marshall, it seemed like Kate was actually dating. It wasn't something she'd ever imagined herself to be any good at, which had always been fine with her until it suddenly mattered. Now she couldn't help but wonder if she was doing a good job or just kind of limping along, like a wounded animal.

A wounded dating animal.

Up ahead, she could see Harry lying in the sand and she wandered over, barefoot in the sand, her sandals left somewhere up by the treeline. "Hey," she said, tilting her head so she could look at him at the right angle. "What's that?"

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Harry let the pages, still secure in his hands, drop down to his chest as he blinked up at Kate. "It's, um, a letter," he explained. He wasn't sure he could do this with the same kind of cool confidence Kate had with her photo album. Talking about the war was hard enough, but talking about his parents? Harry counted himself lucky that he was more annoyed with himself than morose at that moment. "My mother wrote it to my godfather, back when I was still a baby."

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"Oh," Kate answered, then sat down in the sand beside Harry, letting him keep the letter resting on his chest. She wasn't about to grab it and read it, but she was curious all the same and she pulled her legs under her, looking at Harry.

"A bad sort of letter or a good sort of letter?" she asked. She thought he looked kind of frustrated or annoyed or something, but people weren't always easy to read. It could have been any kind of letter, really, and she wouldn't have known.

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Harry's face went a bit pinched as he tried to figure out how to answer that question. "A good sort, I guess?" he said. But then that didn't explain why he probably looked like someone had kicked him and he couldn't kick back.

Sitting up, Harry brushed the sand from the back of his head and from his shoulders, careful not to get any on Kate. "It's a normal letter. But I never knew my parents, not really, so it's sad, too, that way. It's... one of the few things I've got from them."

And it was a prelude to their death, the mention of their betrayer so open and naive that it still stung Harry every time he glanced at Wormtail's name.

[everyone_takes]

"So a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B," she said, then after just a brief hesitation, hooked her arm through the loop of Harry's, resting her chin on his shoulder. As much as stuff had sucked back home sometimes, she'd still had her parents with her every single day and she knew how much more life would've sucked without them. It was hard to imagine never having known them.

"Are you okay?" she asked, not knowing what else to ask.

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Again, Harry wasn't sure how to answer. He was okay in a way, not sad or in need of comfort, though it did feel nice to have Kate so close to him. Her arm through his inspired a faint smile on his lips and he didn't move just so as not to dislodge her chin.

It made things easier to explain. "Remember that war I told you about? That I was a part of? This is.. well, back home this is the day that I defeated Voldemort. That we won the war. I guess I just feel like I should be doing something more than.. more than sitting on a beach," he said.

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"Like having a party or like... mourning?" she asked, pulling back a little bit just so she could actually look at Harry. People had died, she knew that much, but she also knew that winning something like that was a pretty huge thing. Sometimes it was strange, just how big the things were that Harry had done back home and she almost didn't know what to do with it.

"Or having some kind of Veteran's Day?" Back home, that was a pretty normal thing, but she didn't know what would have happened in Harry's world.

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Harry frowned as he thought over the question. He had partied during that dream back home, taking advantage of every minute he had with magic, with his friends. He had mourned too a bit, over those stupid socks that Dobby would have liked so much. He probably should do some more mourning, but he wasn't sure his heart could take it.

"Like a day of remembrance," he decided, because that sounded right. "Or maybe not even a whole day, but something like that. To make sure this isn't just like every other day."

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"There's a wall here," she said slowly, although she knew that wasn't entirely what Harry wanted. "It's like, where the names of people who've disappeared from the island go. Something like that?" It would be a huge task, she figured, but maybe it was something that Harry might like to do. Something to help him remember that today was different than all the others.

"I don't know, I've never really done anything like this," she admitted. "The closest I got to any kind of war back home was when Buck insisted he'd been in Vietnam."

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The wall sounded like the right kind of idea, but the problem was that that was an island memorial. It meant something different from the loss Harry was trying to acknowledge. He wouldn't have liked it if someone put names that didn't belong on his memorial, would he?

He frowned and looked at Kate, faintly amused though he wasn't sure he should be. "Your mom wasn't really old enough to be in that war, was she?"

[everyone_takes]

Letting out a snort of laughter, Kate shook her head. "No. That's just Buck and his weird justification of why he doesn't have a penis. My mom wasn't even born until the seventies, but you can't really change what any of the alters think." One time Alice had even thought she was pregnant; she'd been totally convinced, even though it was impossible.

"So some kind of memorial, then?" she asked after a moment, wondering if she should even bring it up again at all.

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He huffed out a laugh, head dropping slightly as he tried not to think about this Buck person, looking like Kate's mom and explaining why he didn't have a penis. The next natural question was to ask what Buck made of his breasts, but Harry gnawed on his thumbnail instead. Some things were probably better off unasked.

"Maybe," he said after thinking it over. "Maybe even... maybe we can do something with the willow." It didn't seem right to call it the Whomping Willow anymore, since it hadn't whomped anything in ages.

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"The willow?" Kate asked. There were trees all over the island, but she hadn't seen too many willows around. It was probably one of those weird magic things the island did, something that was important to Harry and his friends in some way. "Where is it? I don't think I've ever seen it."

That was the sort of thing that stood out a little, she figured. Especially in the middle of a jungle.

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"It's up on the hill a little," Harry explained. "Between the waterfall and the Compound? It's from home. I know because.." He paused, smiling at the memory, despite the terror it had induced at the time and the morose feelings that lingered now. "..Ron and I crashed a car into it once. A flying car, I should say. And it hit us back. It was sort of enchanted, I guess, and guarded a certain part of the school."

[everyone_takes]

Kate smiled a little at that, trying to imagine someone crashing a flying car into a tree that hit back. It certainly wasn't the sort of thing she ever had to worry about at home in Kansas. Although T had crashed her mom's car on more than one occasion.

"Maybe you should talk to some people from home," she suggested. "I don't know, maybe they'll wanna help you."

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"Probably," Harry agreed, but he dipped his head down again. "It's just that.. they were there. Or will be there. Except for Sirius because he was already gone. And everyone lost someone. ... Or was lost," he said quietly, his brows drawing together. "It's harder to talk about."